Brabec Bulletin Tidbits on Life
March 18, 2025
Quilts In the Snow
Is Handwriting Dying?
Brainstorming in the Shower
How Research Takes Us Down Rabbit Holes
(Abraham Lincoln Trivia)
Ukraine’s Incredible Sand Artist
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Quilts In the Snow
Along the frozen lakes of Savoie, France, artist Simon Beck spends days plodding through the snow in snowshoes to create magnificent sensational patterns of snow art. Working for up to nine hours a day, each final piece is typically the size of three soccer fields. The geometric forms range in mathematical patterns and shapes that create stunning designs that when viewed from higher levels appear to be three-dimensional. I was astonished by the examples of Simon’s snow art on his website and think you will be too.
Is Handwriting Dying?
Below is an excerpt from “Signature Moves: Are we losing the ability to write by hand?” that will give you perspective on the importance of handwriting:
Excerpt: “… we lose something when handwriting disappears. We lose measurable cognitive skills, and we also lose the pleasure of using our hands and a writing implement in a process that for thousands of years has allowed humans to make our thoughts visible to one another. We lose the sensory experience of ink and paper and the visual pleasure of the handwritten word. We lose the ability to read the words of the dead.” – Published in The Guardian.
See also my Bulletin this month, “How to Exercise Your Brain as You Age.” It emphasizes the importance of handwriting to the health of your brain.
Brainstorming in the Shower
Entrepreneurial-minded folks are never out of reach of paper and pen for jotting down brainstorms in the kitchen, on the nightstand in the bedroom, and even in the bathroom where, it is rumored, some of the most creative home-business thinking and learning takes place. Diane Wolverton once wrote a marvelous editorial for her newsletter (now out of print) about the “power of the shower.”
“A shower,” she said, “provides the right conditions to get your creative mind into full gear. First, it’s relaxing and soothing. Second, it’s private time—no phones, no kids, no clients, no pressure to be anything but yourself. And third, the running water is full of negative ions, which have a positive influence on us.”
In checking with other writers and businesspeople, Diane learned she wasn’t the only one who got bursts of inspiration in the shower. Instead of waiting for those bursts of inspiration, she began to schedule them, taking her problems into the shower for resolution. In a “Nekkid Notes Notebook” kept in the bathroom, she began to record all her great ideas, solutions, and brainstorms that came out of her little steam room.
“My shower is my private idea-generating chamber,” she reported. “I’ve written poems in there, organized conferences, planned meetings, written chapters for my book, rehearsed important conversations, and scampered out dripping and cold to jot down just the perfect headline for an ad.”
Can you, too, do some of your best work stark naked? “Try it,” Diane urges. “You’ll be amazed.” – An excerpt from Homemade Money: Starting Smart. © 2004 by Barbara Brabec.
How Research Takes Us Down Rabbit Holes
(Abraham Lincoln Trivia)
My high school chum Glen Walder has told me about some of the interesting rabbit holes he’s gone down while researching his family’s history. We decided this kind of research is like an itch that has to be scratched. And the more one scratches, the more new rabbit holes open up that force one to keep digging for “the rest of the story.”
For example, on searching one of the towns where his relatives had lived, he found surprising historical information that he teased me about. “Have you ever heard of Allan Pinkerton?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard about the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency because I watch a lot of old movies about Civil War days.”
Then he asked, “How about Timothy Webster?”
Nope, I didn’t know that name. Then he told me this interesting story involving the connection between Abraham Lincoln, the two men, and Onarga, Illinois, which is the first town north of my hometown of Buckley, Illinois.
“Timothy Webster discovered the plot to kill Lincoln before his presidency and was successful in protecting him from assassination at that time. He was a spy during the Civil War who was discovered by the Confederacy and was tried and hung.
“Allan Pinkerton was chief of intelligence for Union general George McClellan during the Civil War, and he had protected President-elect Abraham Lincoln during his trip to Washington to be sworn in.
“A friend of Webster’s, Pinkerton later exhumed Timothy Webster’s body and buried him in the Onarga Cemetery where he now has an impressive headstone.”
Later, I surmised that because the population of Onarga is just over a thousand, few people in the area know anything about the connection between these historic characters and President Lincoln. Glen said he found this kind of fascinating historical information in several other small towns around Buckley where both of us went to high school. Makes me wonder what you might have discovered when researching your family’s history.
Ukraine’s Incredible Sand Artist
~ A presentation of Kseniya Simonova’s art
on Ukraine’s Got Talent ~
I first discovered this artist years ago on YouTube, long before she took her performance to the stage of “Got Talent Global” and became famous. If you have followed the war between Russia and Ukraine, you will see its parallel in the heartbreaking story Kseniya tells entirely with sand about Germany attacking Ukraine in 1945. It’s spellbinding to watch her quickly move the sand around to make one scene after another disappear and be replaced by another. Watch, be amazed, and perhaps like many in the audience you may find it difficult to hold back a tear of compassion. (The video is 9 minutes long and well worth your time to watch.)
For more about Got Talent Global, visit this page to watch auditions from America’s Got Talent 2024.
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